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Got ATi video + NVidia video in one system? Nvidia stealth disables PhysX

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4GHZ_or_bust

Now 6GHz or Bust!
Joined
Aug 1, 2002
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Michigan
Saw this one in my magazine that just arrived today and it seems to have occured about 2 months ago:

Nvidia and ATI – longtime rivals who do not play nice together. Although having both ATI and Nvidia hardware inside a PC is unlikely, there's now clear evidence trouble happens when you put the two together.

Those with the very rare configuration of having an ATI GPU for rendering graphics and a Nvidia chip for processing hardware PhysX will find themselves unable to compute.
Anyone running Nvidia driver version 186 will find PhysX acceleration disabled when ATI hardware is also present in the system, SlashGear reported.

Nvidia customer service responded to a user regarding the issue, saying, "Nvidia supports GPU accelerated Physx on NVIDIA GPUs while using NVIDIA GPUs for graphics. NVIDIA performs extensive Engineering, Development, and QA work that makes Physx a great experience for customers."

The email continued to list a couple of reasons why the Nvidia GPU would refuse to accelerate PhysX, with one of them being, of course, for business.

"For a variety of reasons – some development expense some quality assurance and some business reasons NVIDIA will not support GPU accelerated Physx with NVIDIA GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non- NVIDIA GPUs," it read. "I’m sorry for any inconvenience caused but I hope you can understand."

It's a rare setup and a rare problem – probably affecting only the most hardcore – and it's unfortunate that it's no longer an option for those wanting the best of both worlds.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Dirty anti-competition move?
 
Yup.
Already been cracked open though, modded drivers exist to get around the issue.
 
Saw this one in my magazine that just arrived today and it seems to have occured about 2 months ago:



Dirty anti-competition move?

Been a few threads on it already. They didn't make it hard to 'crack' because they don't mind people doing this, they just don't want the headache of supporting a competitors product. Who does the end user call when a new ATI driver comes out and their Nvidia PhysX card stops working?
 
Still, though, they could've just put a warning that it's unsupported with an ATi card, had it disabled by default, and made you click a couple confirmation windows to confirm that, yes, I really do want to enable it anyway, and yes I know it might not work right. I mean, think about the user base this would affect... it's people who, A.) know about Physx and want to use it, and, B.) have managed to install and make work two video cards from different companies. That would imply at least a certain level of knowledge, at least enough that the user should be capable of understanding that it's not an officially supported configuration, and it's a small enough segment of the customer base that even the few inevitable support calls can just be passed off with, "It's not our problem, call ATi."

By quietly removing the option completely, they surely have stirred more of an uproar than would've ever been caused by an ATi driver breaking something.
 
Killing the stanalone physics cards is just rude though.
Their drivers have nothing to do with gpu drivers or video.
 
but the people doing this already decided to give up physx and go ati but then realized they could use there old nvidia cards along with there new ati ones and i dont think nvidia should stop people from doing this they should look to capatalize on it and open up the market for it as the more people that hear about it like me are interested in trying it so i was looking to buy a nvidia card (that i never thought i would ever do since the issue i had with one of the series in 2 different laptops burnt up due to nividas manufacturing error) but then they make it so it wont work so im not gonna give up the performance of my ati cards that run alot cooler and alot less energy just to have physx enabled but all in all im glad to see someone has found a way around it hoping to try this soon gonna give nvidia another shot hope it works out
 
funny i found this thread i'v used a 9600 GT for physX then GTS 250 then gtx 460, and as i upgraded so did the drivers and it was hard to get them to run driver after driver , until i found the physX mod 1.02 - 1.04. and downloaded latest driver and the 1.04 mod still works , just like to report that Nurien Tech Demo that came out back with the 8800GT has seen end of day with the GTX 460 as a physX device . and my dark-void is screwed aswell , other than that all is well just think it's time for a 1.05 mod
 
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